


Fragment Two

by playwrightfate



Series: Asra and Calixta: Of Things Lost and Found [2]
Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Angst, F/M, First Meetings, Fluff, Love at First Sight, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:46:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25550770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/playwrightfate/pseuds/playwrightfate
Summary: It’s a quiet day at the shop. Asra tries to focus on the book he’s reading but he is distracted today. His eyes keep wandering in Calixta’s direction. And he reminisces about what their relationship used to be. About their first meeting. When she came rushing into his booth, framed in light and goddess-like, despite being just seventeen. As he was.Fragment One from Asra’s POV.Part of a collection of drabbles, oneshots and prompts with Asra and my apprentice Calixta.
Relationships: Apprentice/Asra (The Arcana), Asra (The Arcana)/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Asra and Calixta: Of Things Lost and Found [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1704235
Kudos: 10





	Fragment Two

It’s a quiet day at the shop. No client has bothered them for a full hour now. He tries to take advantage of this rare peace to read about the innumerable uses of moonstones, but his eyes drift in her direction over and over again. Bent over her preparation, she seems lost in dosages and calculations. And for a moment he lets his mind wander and imagine that he’s never lost her. That she never died on this island, far away from him. Far away from everything. And that she remembers she loved him. That she remembers each moment spent together. Each talk, each touch, each kiss. As he does. Him, the lonely keeper of their memories. That she has not forgotten, perhaps forever, their love, their bond and the forever sacred memory of their first encounter. When she came rushing into his booth, framed in light and goddess-like, despite being just seventeen. As he was. 

It was the day of the Masquerade. Almost at twilight. The sun was setting down behind the walls of the city when she had strolled in. Confident. Outrageously flirting with him, until he did not know where or who he was anymore. Asking for a reading like a normal customer… As if he had not known, from the moment she had stepped in that she was pure magic, her aura like a crown of light around her whole being. Catching sunlight. The Prakran Crown’s youngest appointed magician, the seven princesses’s favorite, the Queen’s protegee. But like a stammering kid, almost tripping on his own feet because never before had he been so shaken by someone, so smitten by those sparkling brown eyes and their mischievous grin, he had indulged her. 

“Let’s draw only one card and I’ll know who you are” she had told him. And he had, for there was nothing else to do for him but to obey her. And the card had fallen between them like a spell already long cast, spanning millenniums and lifetimes. The Lovers. 

Her smile had made his legs weak, his breath catch in his lungs. And just as swiftly as she had appeared into his orbit, she had vanished. He had never been able to forget her since. Although at first he had tried. 

Stolen from him by an armada of women dressed in white and gold who had suddenly surged into his shop, laughing and telling her things he could not understand. He didn’t really listen, anyway. He barely registered something about “Nadia” and “arriving” and “Masquerade”. Was Nadia her name? How come he did not ask her her name? Had he even uttered a word? The whole universe seemed to have been filled by her and only her for… what? A few seconds? Minutes? An eternity?  
He barely knew what was happening to him. He felt hot and bothered. Floating through time. What sort of weird and dangerous charm did she cast on him? Still flustered, he swore to himself that he would forget all about her. 

But that night, after he had sold all of his masks and some of his charms, after he had done other readings to countless strange faces that seemed even stranger now he had seen hers, he had lingered around the palace a little. Feeling, knowing inexplicably that she was somewhere around there. Close. Until he had spotted her from afar. Alone, leaning on the banister of the balcony overlooking the garden where she had come perhaps to breathe a little and maybe, strangely, he hoped, to think of him. Even alone, she had this aura, this energy around her so strong and hypnotic telling him that wherever she went, she was always the life of the party. Solar, even in the middle of the night. He had gazed upon her a while, until she had seemed to look in his direction, and then he had turned away, blinded, scared. And so he in turn vanished. In the forest. In the dark woods. Hoping he would never see her again. And he hadn’t for a full year. 

All this time lost. He wished he had never parted from her, even for a moment. Back in the present, years after their first encounter, he is still as smitten, as desperately in love as he had been that first night. Yes, in a way, it had been love at first sight. There had been things needing to be detangled, understood, uncovered, known of course. He had fought and struggled against it. But he could not win, for unbeknownst to them, their auras had touched and mingled that day, crafting a bright silver thread binding them. They were never to be parted again. Or so he had thought… Suddenly he is aware of some shadow passing on her face, twisting it with pain. And he jumps from his stool to get to her, but she looks up at him and the shadow is already gone. He stops. The late afternoon light illuminates her face and he sees again the crown of light, and the sun that shines inside of her, and that nothing, not even a journey to the realm of the dead, could eclipse or extinguish. Relieved, he sits down again. And they both go back to their task, him to his book, her to her potion. 

But their minds keep wandering far and wide, beyond the confines of their tiny shop and the space between them. Hers drifting to strange places in the deepest corner of her being where she is looking for elusive shadows and impossible answers. And his, perhaps even further, to the past and an unattainable future. To the days that were and those that never came to be. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading :)


End file.
